BBC2 celebrates 40th birthday with list of old favourites

BBC2 will celebrate its 40th anniversary next week with a special programme that will commemorate the channel's history and its most successful shows from Play School to Little Britain.

To coincide with the celebrations, a list of 40 programmes has been compiled by the Radio Times that contains favourites from every decade of BBC2's history.

The list includes comedy classics such as Fawlty Towers and Monty Python as well as drama such as The Forsyte Saga and This Life. Jane Root, the controller of BBC2, said: "The most enjoyable thing about the channel is that it brings surprise, sophistication and innovation to a range of things.

"It has always been famous for creating both popular comedy and thought-provoking programmes.

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"That sense of variety has been there all the way through the channel's history. It introduces new flavours into the heart of television by taking risks and manages to make things successful that nobody would have expected to be - The Office is a recent example."

The channel will screen Happy Birthday BBC2 next Tuesday evening, in which former controllers including Sir David Attenborough and Alan Yentob will be interviewed.

The programme will examine how classic programmes such as I, Claudius and Top Gear were produced. It will also contain original sketches written and performed by the team behind the cult satirical show Dead Ringers.

Some of the channel's less successful programmes, such as The Borgias, will also be discussed.

Ms Root, who is leaving the BBC to run the American cable network, the Discovery Channel, added: "I'm always looking to innovate. If you don't have some failures, you're not taking enough risks.

"Some comedy programmes, for example, have disappeared without trace. Think of Steve Coogan's Dr Terrible's House of Horrible or Johnny Vaughan's 'Orrible."

Comedy programming has been integral to the channel since it began in 1964, as the Radio Times's list reveals.

Matt Lucas, one of the creators of the comedy sketch show Little Britain, which has received three nominations for this year's Bafta awards, said: "In the last 20 years or so, BBC2 has been the first port of call for the best comedy, from Blackadder and The Young Ones to The Office and I'm Alan Partridge.

"They were all shows people talked about in school or at work the next day. It's also shown great American programmes like Seinfeld, Larry Sanders and The Simpsons."

BBC2 was launched on April 20 1964 but a power cut that affected west London wrecked its opening night. The channel finally began broadcasting the following morning. The first programme to be screened was Play School, which ran for 24 years.

Britain's first colour broadcast was also transmitted on BBC2 on July 1, 1967, when the channel aired four hours of coverage from the Wimbledon championships.

Match of the Day started life on BBC2 before it transferred to BBC1 after England's victory in the 1966 World Cup.

BBC2 also commissioned David Attenborough's pioneering natural history programme Life on Earth, which was first screened in 1979 and featured footage of the presenter frolicking with gorillas.